WASHINGTON - Defense Secretary Robert Gates ordered all branches
of the military Thursday to seek better ways of "identifying
service members who could potentially pose credible threats to
others."

He also announced that the Army will study whether it could have
prevented the massacre at Fort Hood.

"I promise the Department of Defense's full and open
disclosure," Gates said at a Pentagon news conference. "There is
nothing any of us can say to ease the pain for the wounded, the
families of the fallen, and the members of the Fort Hood community
touched by this incident ...

"All that is left for us to do is everything in our power to
prevent similar tragedies from occurring in the future."

Former Army Secretary Togo West and retired Adm. Vernon Clark
will lead the Defense Department review, which is supposed to be
done in 45 days.

Meanwhile, the Senate Homeland Security Committee held its first
hearing about the Nov. 5 shootings on the Texas base. Some at that
session called the massacre a terrorist attack, but Gates declined
to do so.

"I'm going to wait until the facts are in," he said.

The committee is working on an agreement with Obama
administration officials to interview FBI agents and others who
knew about the radical ties of Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, who is
charged with 13 counts of premeditated murder. The administration
has cautioned against reviews that could interfere with the ongoing
criminal investigation of Hasan's motives and connections.

Sen. Joe Lieberman of Connecticut, an independent who heads the
committee, suggested that he was getting cooperation. He said his
investigation would take "a less public turn, with a lot of
interviews and reviewing of documents."

Information sharing?

Sen. Carl Levin, chairman of the Senate Armed Services
Committee, announced an investigation focusing on the Army. The
Michigan Democrat cited concern that an FBI-run terrorism task
force may not have shared pre-massacre intelligence about Hasan
with the Army.

The task force knew last December that Hasan, an Army
psychiatrist, sent 16 e-mails to a radical Muslim cleric, Anwar
al-Awlaki. American authorities previously investigated al-Awlaki's
ties to the 9/11 hijackers, who worshiped at his mosque in
Virginia. Later, the U.S.-born imam moved to his parents' native
Yemen, where he has praised terrorist groups and supported violence
against the West.

The FBI has said a task force analyst decided Hasan's e-mails
were consistent with his research on Muslim U.S. soldiers' feelings
about the Iraq and Afghanistan wars.

ABC News reported late Thursday that Nisan told al-Awlaki, "I
can't wait to join you" in the afterlife, according to an American
official with access to e-mails exchanged between Hasan and the
cleric between December 2008 and June 2009.

"It sounds like code words," said Lt. Col. Tony Shaffer, a
military analyst at the Center for Advanced Defense Studies. "That
he's actually either offering himself up or that he's already
crossed that line in his own mind."

Sen. Susan Collins of Maine said Thursday that the e-mails,
combined with Hasan's outspoken opposition to the war while working
at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, should have
raised "warning signs and red flags galore."

Collins, the top Republican on the Senate Homeland Security
Committee, said the situation reminded her of the compartmentalized
"information that was available throughout the federal government,
in different agencies, prior to the attacks on our country on
9/11."

Last week, the White House ordered a far-reaching review of all
intelligence on Hasan.

Some experts who appeared Thursday before the Homeland Security
Committee said "political correctness" may have crept into the
decision about how to deal with Hasan. The experts warned that a
growing number of homegrown extremists have plotted to attack
military bases and recruiting centers.

"There might have been some sort of self-censoring, if you will,
a reluctance for them to pursue a senior, uniformed military
member, a doctor who was Muslim," said Frances Townsend, former
homeland security adviser to President George W. Bush.

Juan Zarate, a former deputy national security adviser for
counterterrorism under Bush, disagreed. He said Hasan's profession
and research interests may indeed have made his contact with
al-Awlaki appear to be legitimate.

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